Charest-Weinberg is pleased to
present “Black Sculpture\,” an exhibition of new w
ork by New York-based artist Fernando Mastrangelo. The exhibition will open
to the public on Tuesday\, November 29th and will be on view through Febru
ary 29th\, 2012. There will be an opening reception on November 29t
h from 6-8pm.

Mastrangelo approaches sculpture as a c
ommunion of concept\, form and materials. Over the years\, he has become kn
own for using unexpected materials that heighten his work's critical effect
. Avarice\, 2008\, is based on the Aztec calendar\, made entirely
from white Mexican corn\, and critiques NAFTA and the U.S. corn farming ins
titution. Felix\, 2009\, is a life-size statue of a Colombian coca
farmer cast from pure cocaine. Following that\, he spent a year in Los Ang
eles\, documenting the El Salvadorian gang MS-13 and casting relief sculptu
res based on their tattoos from human ash. This oeuvre is much more than a
laundry list of Hispanic social problems\; it represents art at once social
ly responsible and aesthetically formidable. It comes as no surprise that M
astrangelo was an assistant for Matthew Barney from 2004-2005. But whereas
the older artist used materials metaphorically in order to create an esoter
ic cosmology of meaning\, Mastrangelo remains conceptually and materialisti
cally literal.

For “Black Sculpture\,” Mastrangelo focuses on
art history for the first time. After creating exact molds based on the wo
rk of Frank Stella and Ad Reinhardt\, Mastrangelo casts his reliefs out of
compacted gunpowder. The pieces teeter on the precipice of annihilation\; b
y forging the work of canonical artists in gunpowder\, Mastrangelo simultan
eously pays homage to the work of earlier iconoclasts and seeks to destroy
them for himself. “Black Sculpture” takes on previous Oedipal crises\, such
as Rauschenberg’s Erased De Kooning\, 1953\, and adds an element
of contemporary spectacle. Yet the pieces are not simply bombastic\; they a
re firmly embedded in recent narratives-both the modernist quest for reduct
ion and a knowing appreciation for appropriation and found imagery. Further
more\, submerged beneath the tense potential for destruction is an elegiac
calm. They give form to the Existential angst that inspired their Cold War-
era predecessors. Ad Reinhardt once said\, “I am sure external agony does n
ot enter very importantly into the agony of our painting.” The black gunpow
der\, coupled with the Reinhardt’s cruciform and Stella’s teleological line
work\, firmly suggests an end of something.

Fernando Mastrang
elo received an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2
004. He has exhibited internationally\, and is in the permanent collection
of the Brooklyn Museum. “Black Sculpture” is his first solo exhibition with
Charest-Weinberg.